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Covid 19 virus

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thinkfat:

--- Quote from: VK3DRB on March 24, 2020, 11:03:23 pm ---We should get Bill Gates involved. The guy has been fighting viruses since Windows 95.

--- End quote ---
He also held a memorable TED talk about 5 years ago about the threat of pandemics.

iMo:

--- Quote from: nctnico on March 24, 2020, 10:48:32 pm ---
--- Quote from: Leo Bodnar on March 24, 2020, 10:40:10 pm ---I recall that around 75% of infections in Wuhan were caused by asymptomatic carriers.
Don't forget that you can cough or sneeze irrespective of the fact that you are also carrying SARS-CoV-2 but have not had any symptoms yet (average is around 5.1 days.)
Leo

--- End quote ---
Now think of that a little bit more. If you have no symptoms then it is unlikely you cough and/or sneeze. So what is the primary carrier of the infection in such a case? How does the virus jump from one person to the other?

--- End quote ---
People sneeze and cough for many reasons even they are not infected. They also spread droplets when they talk.
With asymptomatic sars-cov-2 carrier - they may touch their nose or mouth with their hands. Wearing the face mask will make nose-picking more difficult..

PS: The US will be reopened by Easter [CNN]

engrguy42:
Geez, you guys are still arguing about freakin' masks?  :-//

Wear 'em if you got 'em. Can't hurt.

But if you're really smart you'll grab one of them big 5 gallon water bottles and wrap it around your head instead.  :-+

Cerebus:
The worrying thing here is you sound like you know what you're talking about, and that might lead people to take what you're saying seriously. Then you betray the fact that you're clueless right at the end, which immediately casts doubt on anything you say.


--- Quote from: thinkfat on March 24, 2020, 11:01:02 pm ---I'm aware of that study that suggests the virus easily survives days on plastic or metal surfaces and stays active. This has been demonstrated in the lab only, by infecting bacteria cultures in a petri dish. It's not yet clear how/if this study can be transferred into real world risk. The study only shows, if you put a droplet full of virus onto a plastic or metal sheet and then let it dry for a certain amount of time (some hours, days) the virus is still able to infect a petri dish full of bacteria in optimal environment.

--- End quote ---

I don't wish to be unnecessarily harsh by using words like "clueless", but one should not be trusted to offer or promulgate biomedical information if you think that a human virus will replicate in "petri dish full of bacteria". Anybody who knows anything about biology, medicine, pathology or virology knows that statement to be 100% wrong. (See wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virus and scroll down to "host range" if you don't believe me.)

Edit: For the record, samples recovered from surfaces were actually cultured in cells of the Vero E6 line, which is a particular cell line of kidney epithelial cells originally derived from an African green monkey and used for laboratory tissue culture. (Paper HERE

Mr. Scram:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on March 24, 2020, 11:10:42 pm ---You didn't address any of what I just said above.
I linked to the recommendations of the WHO that clearly imply that masks are to be used if you may be infected, or if you're dealing with someone who is. The WHO you keep mentioning writes that. Have you actually read what they say?

The only thing I'm questioning at this point concerning what they say is that they seem to restrict the use of masks only if you or someone you have to be close to is infected, and my questioning is because there are likely a lot of people not showing any symptom but that are also clear potential vectors.

I do not agree again that only if you cough or sneeze heavily you're a hazard. We keep emitting very small droplets all the time without noticing it. And anyway, we may just cough or sneeze randomly without being able to control it just because of dust or anything else. So my point is NO you don't have to have developed clear symptoms to be contagious.

Now given the scarcity of masks, it can make sense to be cautious about promoting them unreasonably. This is risk and resource management. I personally think that if they had recommended for everyone to wear masks regardless of their condition, this would have triggered an uncontrollable panic as we just can't provide them. That I understand fully. I also agree with the point that most people don't know how to put them on properly, but still think some barrier is better than none at all.

For the rest, I again haven't seen in the WHO recommendations a clear point saying that masks are useless, since they recommend using them in the above cases.

--- End quote ---
I've read what they say. They also say to only use masks if you know how to use them. That's not many people. As far as the droplets argument I'm going to point at my previous post about social distancing and argue that this will have occurred to the WHO. Their advice takes this into account and I don't think either of us are really qualified to second guess it. A barrier isn't necessarily better than none for reasons discussed. If anything this thread is a good illustration why the average Joe cannot be relied upon to follow simple advice and instructions. They'll do whatever seems right to them and potentially cause a disaster because they don't have a clue what they're doing.

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